Chapter Text
When Dr. Gaul said she already had his first assignment ready, Coriolanus expected another paper on war or power or whatever the next extrapolation of her worldview lead to.
Instead, hours after returning to the Capitol when he thought he’d be at Officer’s Orientation in District Two, he was following Dr. Gaul down a cramped hallway on the lowest level of her laboratory. The light had a sickly green hue here, bulbs recessed into the ceiling such that even in an unadorned hallway, their intersecting shadows cast strange shapes on the walls and floor. The doors were sparse, and lacked any glass to view the contents of the rooms behind.
Corolianus half felt like a fool, following her down here alone. Had her commendations been a ruse, one more prod of the stick, playing with her lab rat before she brought him to slaughter? But he didn’t dare question her, didn’t dare show any sign of doubt now. He’d chosen to follow Gaul, and he’d have to own that.
“Yes, I believe we’ve got him in this one,” Dr. Gaul said when they reached the end of the hall. A door, which once was likely white but now appeared a putrid shade of yellow, lay unmarked before them. How Dr. Gaul knew what lay behind was one question, but another, more urgent inquiry breached Coriolanus’s lips first.
“Him?”
Dr. Gaul laughed under her breath as she unlocked the door, and in lieu of answering, merely swung it open and ushered Coriolanus inside.
A large cage sat in the middle of the room; a small room, otherwise sparse with furniture. A lab bench pushed to the side, what looked like a shower, drain, and hose in the corner. Inside the cage, a thin rug had been laid down to cover the cold metal floor, and on the rug, a human shape sat curled up, facing away from the door.
The person was immediately familiar to Coriolanus, but in this context, and given what he’d been told back in Twelve, his mind processed the information slowly. The shape of the shoulders, the arched hairline at the back of the neck, the forward tilt of the ears, the waved pattern of his slightly grown-out hair.
“Sejanus?” Coriolauns said, hushed and incredulous. “What is this—they said he died!”
“Did you see his body yourself?” Dr. Gaul asked.
“No. Traitor’s don’t… don’t get burials.” Coriolanus frowned. He should have known it was suspicious, when they said he’d attempted to escape the night before he was to be hanged, and they’d had to gun him down for the safety of the others on the base. It would be more like Sejanus to lay down and accept his fate like a sad little martyr.
“They said I died?” Sejanus croaked. He half turned towards them, and Coriolanus steeled himself to keep from shrinking back at the look of him. His gaze was hazy, his lips were cracked, and his eyes sunk into deep purple sockets. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in days, perhaps not even slept.
“My parents think I’m dead?” His voice sounded terrible. Coriolanus imagined all the screaming it must have taken to rend his throat so broken.
“They do, we all do. Or, did,” Coriolanus said. “Dr. Gaul, what is the meaning of this?”
“According to every legal record, he is dead,” she said. “So for our purposes, he is the perfect subject—in that he is not one anymore.” She smiled wickedly. “He is an object.”
“Excuse me!” Sejanus said, but she ignored him. She was only watching Coriolanus’s reaction.
“And what purpose is that, exactly?” he asked.
“Your first assignment is this: a human life now belongs to you. You will decide what happens to him,” Dr. Gaul announced.
“What?” Sejanus screeched. Coriolanus stood there, not sure what to say.
“I’d start by muzzling him, personally,” Dr. Gaul shot Sejanus a dirty look, then smiled at Coriolanus. “But it’s up to you now, of course.”
“I don’t understand,” Coriolanus finally spoke. “How exactly is this an assignment? I mean… what am I supposed to learn?”
“That’s your problem here?” Sejanus said. Dr. Gaul ignored him.
“If I told you that, it would defeat the purpose of the assignment. You can’t ask for the answers before you’ve taken the exam,” she said.
“Yes, well, usually one at least understands what subject they're being tested on in advance,” Coriolanus replied.
Dr. Gaul laughed and shook her head.
“You’ll see, Mr. Snow. You’ll see.”
Coriolanus looked down at Sejanus, staring slack-jawed at him from where he sat in the cage. He wore nothing but a thin pair of boxer shorts and a white tank, both which appeared wrinkled and damp. It struck Coriolanus that he didn’t smell any human excrement, so even if they hadn’t been feeding Sejanus, they must have been allowing him to properly relieve himself.
He sighed under his breath. He was already realizing what a headache this was going to be, bearing the responsibility for another person’s every need. He would need to see to his hygiene, health, meals, clothes, bedding, activities to keep him entertained, and all while Sejanus would be begging to be released, most likely.
But why not give him what he wanted, then, if Coriolanus was hardly interested in taking care of him?
“So I’m in charge of what happens to him?” he said at last.
“As I said,” Dr. Gaul nodded.
“And what if I say to release him?”
Sejanus gasped, a smile spreading across his lips. He looked at Coriolanus with gratitude and pride and warmth, like he just knew Coriolanus was going to say that.
“Then we release him,” Dr. Gaul said. “But I’m sure you realize what would happen to him, in that case.”
Coriolanus frowned.
“He’s still an enemy of the state,” he said. So Sejanus would be caught and executed. He might try to escape, to run north like he’d planned, but from the Capitol? He’d never make it. Perhaps Coriolanus could ask for him to be released back in Twelve, but he doubted Dr. Gaul would let him escape in that case, nor would she look kindly on Coriolanus for the traitorous answer to her test.
So Sejanus’s only hope was to remain caged, and under Coriolanus’s care.
Coriolanus rubbed his fingers over his nose, closed his eyes, and suppressed a frustrated groan. He didn’t particularly want to see Sejanus executed, not when the blame would now be doubly on him. He didn’t want to bear full responsibility for his life either, but then he had no idea how long this would go on for. Maybe if he learned his lesson in a few months, Dr. Gaul would whisk him away for her experiments and that would be the end of it.
He could at least make Sejanus comfortable in the meantime. He didn’t like the idea of walking around knowing a boy he once considered a peer was starving to death in a cage somewhere because he couldn’t be bothered to feed him.
“Right. And do I have to fund his care myself, or do I have your resources at my disposal?” Coriolanus asked.
“Within reason, you may use the laboratory’s resources, yes,” she answered. She already looked pleased that he’d committed himself to the task.
“Wait, no—” Sejanus crawled closer to the front of the cage. “What happened to letting me go?”
“We’ll talk later,” Coriolanus said. He didn’t want to explain this to Sejanus in front of Dr. Gaul, since he was already mentally preparing two very different explanations for his actions for each of them.
“For now, can we get him some food and water? And something more comfortable to sleep on. And some proper clothes, probably. Clean ones,” he said.
“Indeed we can. Anything else?” Dr. Gaul asked.
“Frankly, I think he needs a bigger cage. One he can stand up in,” Coriolanus said. “Perhaps not a cage then. More like a cell?”
“Oh, but he can’t stand up at all,” Dr. Gaul said.
Coriolanus looked down at Sejanus, scrutinizing his crumpled form.
Sejanus’s face seemed to take on a flushed color, and he looked down, gaze straying to his own legs. The left one. Coriolanus saw it now.
They’d broken his leg, the skin purple and twisted, his ankle bent at an unnatural angle.
“I’d like him to receive medical attention for that,” Coriolanus said before he could stop to consider his words. He just felt a heat in his chest, the bile of anger rising in his throat, indignant as a child finding his toys broken after being made to share them.
“Are you sure?” Dr. Gaul asked.
“I don’t need him infirm to keep a handle on him,” Coriolauns snapped. It was a good excuse for her, but he didn’t like that Sejanus had heard it.
“Coryo—”
“Later, okay? Later.” Coriolauns put out a hand. He needed time to think about all this.
“Very well. We’ll see to it.” Dr. Gaul gestured to the door. “I believe you have some family waiting for you in the lobby, Mr. Snow.”
“Wait!” Sejanus screamed as they turned to leave. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me here! Coryo, make them release me! Tell them to let me go!”
Coriolanus tried not to, but he glanced over his shoulder as they left. Sejanus held onto the bars of the cage, his terrified eyes glassed over with tears, and rattled his confinements as he pleaded for freedom.
The door shut behind them, and Coriolanus couldn’t hear him anymore.
…
Coriolanus was tempted to merely care for Sejanus from a distance, as he was quite capable of simply delivering mandates for Dr. Gaul’s staff to carry out, but he knew he’d promised Sejanus they’d talk, and after making the same mistake with Clemensia, he knew better than to put it off. Every day he stayed away would only make Sejanus less and less likely to trust his excuses.
So the next night, once he’d seen for himself on the cameras watching the cage that Sejanus was now laying atop a mattress fitted with a sheet, wearing proper trousers and a clean shirt, given plenty of water to drink and fed a full meal, Coriolanus packed a few more items into a bag, requested the keys to both the room and the cage, and headed down in the elevator.
The lies he’d told all that day seemed to rattle around in the small, enclosed space. He’d shed tears with the Plinths when they came to welcome him home and reminisce about their son. He’d so meekly accepted their offer of financial support after several polite refusals. He’d even made a show of his grief for Tigris, as an excuse for his absence that night. He wanted to delve into Dr. Gaul’s work for him because he couldn’t bear to think about Sejanus any longer, who she and she alone knew Coriolanus did not, in fact, have a brotherly relationship with.
The elevator dinged, and the doors shuffled open. The ghoulishly green hallways stretched out before him. His stomach turned, remembering the things he’d done with Sejanus, how carelessly close he’d let him get to him. What did that mean, now that he was Coriolanus’s assignment?
Coriolanus walked down the hall, setting his shoulders back and righting his spine. He put a neutral, slightly bored look on his face, and turned the key in the door.
“Sejanus,” he greeted him.
“Coryo… you came back,” Sajanus said. He looked at Coriolanus warily, like a feral cat that wasn’t sure whether to accept the food being held out to them.
“I brought you a few things,” Coriolanus moved right onto business. He set the bag down next to the door of the cage, then kneeled and pulled out the second key. Sejanus looked surprised, then tensed up, ready to lunge.
“Please don’t try to run,” Coriolanus sighed, dropping the hand holding the key so it was no longer level with the lock. “I don’t want to have to wrestle you back in here.”
“What happened to letting me go?” Sejanus said.
“It’s safer for you to stay. I don’t know…” Coriolanus purposefully looked up at the camera. “I don’t know how much she’ll really let me do, you see? It’s safer for you if we follow the rules.”
“Oh. You really think…?”
Coriolanus nodded.
“But—but you will try to get me out of here, right? You can’t just leave me here forever,” Sejanus said.
“I’m trying. I mean, I’m thinking. I have some ideas,” Coriolanus said, then shook his head. “Please just stay there. Let me put some things in the cage for you.”
“Fine.” Sejanus relaxed, slumping into a sitting position that kept the weight off his broken ankle.
“Thank you.” Coriolanus stuck the key in the lock, turned it, and to his relief, Sejanus did not bolt for the door as it swung open. Coriolanus pulled the bag a little closer, and unloaded the first items.
“I brought some books. Since I imagine you’re bored,” Coriolanus said. “Then I have a toothbrush and some toothpaste, soap and a towel. I’ve asked them to let you wash off properly when they hose you down after the bathroom breaks, if you want to, that is. And you should get a new pair of clothes, or at least a clean pair of clothes, every day. Here’s a hairbrush as well, and then a blanket, in case you get cold.”
Coriolanus laid the items down in neat order on the edge of the mattress, since it filled nearly the whole floor of the cage. Sejanus watched, not particularly impressed, but not ungrateful either.
“Also, I don’t know if the doctor told you anything after she looked at your leg?” Coriolanus asked as he gently tucked the door to the cage closed again. Once the key was in the lock, a small relief softened in his tight shoulders.
“No. She just turned it around and poked at it and looked vaguely annoyed,” Sejanus said.
“Alright, well, she gave me the prognosis, and unfortunately it’s been a little too long since it was broken to do anything without surgical intervention. She wants you stable for a few days, and then you will have to not eat or drink anything for eight hours before the surgery,” Coriolanus said. “But! I have an idea. Since they’re going to have to move you for surgery anyways, I’m going to see about setting up a better room for you. One with a real bathroom and a ceiling tall enough to stand up in. When you can actually stand up again.”
“That… would be nice,” Sejanus nodded.
“Good. That’s my plan, for now.”
Sejanus made a sour face.
“And after that?” he asked.
“I’m still figuring that out,” Coriolanus said, and it wasn’t entirely untrue. He did need to decide what to do with Sejanus, but he already knew that it wouldn’t involve the boy’s freedom, at least not in the broader sense of the word. He’d decided he would like to free him from Dr. Gaul’s area of influence, but once he was safe from her, Coriolanus couldn’t imagine much else for Sejanus.
It was like the sad cases of wild animals who were too injured to be released in the wild. Is it more cruel to keep them imprisoned, but safe and well-cared for, or to let them taste a few hours, perhaps days, of freedom only to be cruelly and surely plucked from the Earth?
Coriolanus had already lived in a world where he was the reason Sejanus was dead. He knew what that felt like. He didn’t particularly want to live in that reality again.
Sejanus did not look satisfied with that answer, but rather than continue to question Coriolanus, he crawled forward and inspected his new belongings. The hygiene items he left in their neat piles, but the blanket he took and wrapped around his shoulders, and his expression changed slightly, some small modicum of comfort creeping in.
He picked through the books, one of which seemed to interest him more than the others, and held it in his two hands but did not open it.
“Have you seen my parents?” he asked.
“Yes,” Coriolanus could not lie to him about this.
“Did you—have you told them I’m alive?” Sejanus asked with an intense urgency. Coriolanus knew this part would be difficult to explain, but he wanted Sejanus to understand. He only hoped he could understand.
“No,” he said. “I’m not sure what good it would do.”
“What good?” Sejanus began to argue, but Coriolanus kept talking.
“They can’t come see you. And what would I say? He’s alive, but in a cage? Officially, he’s still dead, and if he were ever seen in public and that disproved, he’d be hunted down and executed? I can’t tell you mother that. She’s already grieved so much.”
“But she can’t go on thinking I’m dead when I’m not!” Sejanus said. “It isn’t right! She needs to know! And—and my father too!”
Coriolanus frowned. He made a show of it.
“You must know he can’t buy your way out of this one,” he said.
“That’s not what I…” Sejanus turned a little red around the ears, and did not finish his sentence.
“Look. I just don’t see how it helps anything, not right now. And besides, they might break the law trying to free you, and then what would happen to them?” Coriolanus said.
Sejanus looked pained, squeezing the book with white knuckles, but finally relented.
“Fine. I understand.”
“Thank you.” Coriolanus moved to stand, and Sejanus dropped the book to cling onto the bars of the cage instead.
“Wait—please don’t go yet,” he said.
“It’s late Sejanus,” Coriolanus said.
“I know, but I—it’s so—I’m so terribly lonely. Please.” Sejanus bowed his head, shame and desperation trembling in his shoulders. Coriolanus sighed, moved closer to the cage, and touched one of Sejanus’s hands.
Sejanus tensed at the contact, then twisted his hand around and held onto Coriolanus’s knuckles.
“No one else talks to me,” Sejanus said. “I knew, in theory, that solitary confinement is supposed to be one of the most maddening forms of torture, but I didn’t realize how quickly it would set in. It was only… a few days, wasn’t it?”
Coriolanus nodded.
“I should get you a clock,” he said, and Sejanus laughed, squeezing his hand fondly.
“Pragmatic as always.” He smiled through the words, and Coriolanus felt a familiar surge of magnetism course through him. What he felt for Sejanus was a bodily thing, at times, this pull to touch and press and dominate. The bars of the cage stopped him, though, and he merely frowned at the pair of lips across from his, wanting to crush them against his own.
“Can we just talk about something normal, for now?” Sejanus asked. “I’d give anything to feel normal.”
Coriolanus indulged him, for a short time. He assumed Sejanus would not like to know about Coriolanus’s classes starting in the fall or what his parents had said when he saw them but hours ago, and instead stepped into the past, recalling benign events from their times together in school, and a few memories from Twelve that did not tread into traitorous territory. Sejanus held tightly to his hand all the while, and Coriolanus found he was less annoyed by the gesture than he thought he would be.
It was different, Sejanus’s clinginess, when it was not so much that he believed in Coriolanus’s kindness, but needed it, whether it was there or not.
“I’m afraid I do have to go now,” he said when a dozen or so minutes had passed in placid company.
“When will you be back?” Sejanus asked. He clung to Coriolanus’s hand, unwilling to let go until he had an answer, it seemed.
“Not tomorrow, I’m afraid. I have quite a bit of business to take care of. The day after, I’ll try,” Coriolanus said.
“You’ll try?” Sejanus did not like that answer.
“Yes,” Coriolanus doubled down. “I’ll try. And I’ll ask them to give you a clock on my way out. Should help you hold onto some sanity while I’m gone.”
He pulled his hand away, and although Sejanus tried to keep hold of it, their fingers slipped apart. His shoulders drooped, and Coriolanus thought he looked quite pitiful, almost annoyingly so. Like a puppy trying to trick you into feeding it a second meal.
“I’m… I’m trusting you, Coryo,” Sejanus said. Coriolanus thought the sentiment incredibly foolish—assuming he actually meant it. Coriolanus doubted that. He held back a scoff at the blatant manipulation, and instead nodded solemnly as he rose back to his feet.
“I know. I promise to do what I can for you,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
…
Coriolanus only managed to visit Sejanus once more before the doctor deemed him ready for surgery, but he did prepare Sejanus’s new living arrangements. He didn’t want to arouse suspicion from Tigris, so he only dropped into the Citadel briefly most days, checked on Sejanus through the cameras, and made requests for his conditions. Dr. Gual had yet to comment on his choices, but she watched him with a curious half-grin as he brought a bundle of bedding and clothes down to Sejanus’s new cell the day of the surgery.
If she somehow knew that Coriolanus had stolen them from Sejanus’s old room while helping the Plinths prepare to move, she did not say.
They were washed—Ma Plinth had kept her son’s room in pristine condition while he was away, hoping he’d perhaps be home sooner than anticipated—but they still had a particular Sejanus scent lingering on them. Coriolanus had never particularly noticed that smell until the night he was told Sejanus had been killed. He lied in Sejanus’s bunk and inhaled so deeply into the boy’s pillow, he’d ingrained that smell forever into his memories.
But Sejanus was not dead. He was alive and safe, as long as Coriolanus could keep him so.
The new room was slightly easier to access, not as deep within the Laboratory, and rather than a cage, contained a cell. The door opened into a small vestibule from which one could watch and interact with the inmate behind the thin metal bars.
The cell itself was not large, but comfortable. A double bed with a soft mattress, a small dresser for clothes, a simple desk and chair, a rug covering most of the cold, concrete floor. A door to a bathroom, fitted with a toilet, sink, and open shower. He’d even had a small mirror hung and adjusted the light bulbs so they were a warm hue, not the cold-blue sterile light of a morgue.
Coriolanus pulled the fitted sheet taught around the corners of the mattress and made up the blankets and pillows. He folded the shirts and pants and tucked them into the dresser drawers. Then he added a final touch: a poster-print he’d snatched from the wall of Sejanus’s old bedroom depicting a tiny sailboat casting out into a sun-glittered sea and a flock of gulls soaring across the teal sky. Hung above the desk, it made the bare-plaster walls seem less dreary.
Then he waited. He’d brought a notebook and a pen, along with the readings from his first class on Political Theory, and began to jot down notes, forming ideas to share in class or expand into papers. University was going to keep him busy, but this was a kind of busy he enjoyed. His brain occupied on a higher level, not focused purely on where he was going to find his next meal and how he was going to hide his hunger from others.
His life had changed radically since his return to the Capitol. The Plinths treated him like their own son, and he was not going to waste the opportunity afforded to him. The lowest point of his life was over, he’d decided, and there was nowhere to go but up. Snow lands on top, indeed, and Corolianus planned on making that top as high as humanly possible.
The door handle clunked, then creaked, then the hinges swung open. He turned the desk chair around, watching the two nurses carry Sejanus’s unconscious body into the room on a stretcher.
“Where would you like him?” one of them asked. The other, Coriolanus quickly realized, was not a nurse at all but an Avox.
“On the bed, please,” he said. She nodded, and they carried him in past the open cell door, then set the stretcher down on the ground next to the bed, taking him by the legs and shoulders to hoist him up onto the bed.
“How did he fare?” Coriolanus asked.
“Oh just fine, I’m told,” the nurse said. “Doctor will be by when he’s come to. Are you going to wait?”
Coriolanus looked at Sejanus. His leg was completely entombed in bandages, and he had a patch of gauze around his elbow, where they’d fed the anesthetic in, most likely. He seemed fine otherwise, but his sleep appeared somewhat troubled, his brows pinched.
“I’ll wait,” he said.
The nurse and the Avox left promptly. Coriolanus locked the door behind them, then after a minute of deliberation, the cell door as well, with himself still inside. He doubted Sejanus could overwhelm him and steal the key in his current state, and he’d rather the door be locked when Sejanus awoke. He wanted him to see the cell as a closed space, not an open one.
He returned to his notes, though now the room was so quiet, he could hear every drag of breath in Sejanus’s throat, and found it incredibly distracting. He put down his pen with a sigh and turned the chair towards the bed.
It occurred to him then that he’d never actually seen Sejanus’s old room with him in it. He’d seen it now, while helping to take it apart, and though he was seeing the boy laying atop what used to be his blankets and pillows, it was in a prison cell. Something about that felt wrong to Coriolanus, like a missed opportunity. He should have pursued proximity to Sejanus before the mess of the Games.
But he used to think of him as only an annoyance. Then Dr. Gaul made him rescue Sejanus from the arena, and something changed. They shared an intimate moment, yes, but it made Coriolanus realize something. He found relief in Sejanus’s touch. Not in any grand emotional way, but something quite practical, something he could get used to.
Put simply, he liked what their intimacies did for the chemical balance in his brain.
Perhaps that was part of why those few days where Coriolanus had thought him dead were so unbearable. He’d lost his favorite outlet, one that would take a significant amount of effort to replace. Not that Coriolanus doubted he could find someone else to fuck—but finding someone who made it so easy, so seamless, so wordless? That would be difficult.
Coriolanus stood up and walked over to the bed. He liked the routine they’d gotten used to in Twelve. Regular intervals of physical relief, followed by a cold shower and sleeping like a rock through the night. He missed it.
He missed Sejanus.
That thought made him frown. He really shouldn’t feel any fondness for the boy, not after what he’d gotten Coriolanus involved in. They both could have been executed for treachery if Coriolanus hadn’t destroyed the evidence, and Sejanus most certainly would have hanged if not for Dr. Gaul’s whims. Realistically, he should despise Sejanus.
But wasn’t that always true? He was supposed to hate him, and yet, somehow, did not?
He felt a familiar magnetic pull, standing over Sejanus with nothing to separate them now, and slowly reached out a hand to press the backs of his fingers into his cheek.
Sejanus’s skin was warm. A hint of stubble made his jaw scratchy. His lips were parted, breathing through a small gap in his neat, white teeth. Coriolanus’s thumb pressed the lower lip down, revealing the pink, wet skin on the underside of his lip and the red stretch of his gums. The finger slid up, over his teeth, into his mouth, opening his jaw and pressing into his tongue.
He was so pliable like this. Asleep. Drugged. At Coriolanus’s mercy.
Sejanus grunted, head turning away slightly, and Coriolanus’s hand snapped away. The drugs were wearing off, he reminded himself, and hurried back into the desk chair. His pen hovered over the page, not a single word written, as Coriolanus’s mind tumbled like a stone rolling down a hilly slope.
He had never actually wanted to do that before. He didn’t think he was the sort of man to even consider it. He hadn’t thought of it at all before Sejanus.
Sejanus had made him fantasize about it, but it was only a fantasy. He’d touched himself to the thought of holding the boy down and taking him, forceful and unwilling. But he’d never been in the position to bring fantasy into reality. He had not ever considered that a possibility.
If they were to do those things here, though, in this situation, would it not all be that? How could he rightly believe Sejanus capable of consenting when he was a captive man, when his life depended on how Coriolanus felt about him?
And how was it that he felt it more unbearable not to do those things than to violate Sejanus’s trust in that way?
He looked back at the bed. Sejanus made a soft noise and rolled his head to one side, his brows furrowing deeper. He would wake soon.
Coriolains gulped.
He felt quite sure of what he would do, thought he knew it wouldn’t be today. Sejanus had been saved for him, for his purposes. And he only had one purpose for the boy.